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Hello world. It’s Dr. B and Elizabeth to bring you a fun and exciting show today, Elizabeth, I want to say hi to everybody. She’s been so excited to see everybody. Okay. So we are here. You ready to do this girlfriend? I’m ready to rock and roll. So I want to thank ChiroSecure again for giving us this platform and for giving us the ability to bring you this incredible information, um, that we are going to dive into dyslexia today. And why did I choose this topic is because it seems like I’ve been getting pinged right, and left with messages on Facebook and messenger and all those things that we have these days about what is the deal about dyslexia and what do we look as chiropractors? What can we look for and what can we possibly do to bridge the gap? So that little fiddle farts don’t end up having issues with reading, writing, spelling, and those things that are associated with dyslexia in the academic years.
So I’m going to deep dive in dive and dive in to a, uh, a presentation. I’m going to throw some PowerPoint slides up here, and we’re going to walk and rock through this. Um, so again, thank you ChiroSecure for being, um, a part of my life and a part of the chiropractic profession and giving us this amazing platform to bring this incredible information to the world. So things that, um, we’re going to start with things to look for, like a C like where’s Waldo kind of thing in your practices and your clinics. What are some things that you might see in the developmental trajectory, starting from infancy forward? These are red flags that I want you to get comfortable looking at, um, through a different window of if I see these things, what might that little fiddle part struggle with in the academic years?
So one crossing the midline, being able to, uh, know we have a right and a left, which is called laterality, um, knowing I have a right side of the left side, right side of my body left side of my body who writes out of my brain left side of my brain and being able to cross that midline. We often see those with quote, unquote, dyslexia, have trouble recognizing right and left. They often have times with directions, like, um, saying, go turn right at the light or turn left at the street. Um, oftentimes you’ll see them still doing this thing for left and right. So these are things. These are characteristics we might see in our practice paradigm, but let’s back up a little bit and look from early years from infancy on, um, some things that are associated with dyslexia, but we don’t know to look for our language delays, speech delays, fine motor delays, fine motor delays are associated with later on being diagnosed with difficulty, with reading, writing, spelling.
Those are things that are associated with dyslexia trouble with, um, auditory interpretation of sounds, visual interpretation. Um, and, um, so reading, spelling, writing, things like that, and ear infections as a chiropractic profession, oftentimes that is one of the most common things parents will bring their kiddos to care practice for are for ear infections. Again, not that we treat ear infections, not that we treat dyslexia, but what I want to bring together is how to look at this from a global masterpiece kind of standpoint. So these are some of the things that are seen with those later on, um, uh, being said to have dyslexia. So let’s talk about foundations, obviously the chiropractic adjustment. Why is this so important? Because it’s the foundation of what we do of connecting the brain to the body and the body to the brain. But I want to give you a little bit different perspective.
Oftentimes with those that struggle with dyslexia, they, they don’t know for instance, they might confuse B’s and D’s and PS and QS. So obviously reading and reading comprehension, spelling. Those can be issues that is because they don’t understand spatial orientation. So how does chiropractic fit into this message? A if we don’t know where we are in space, because subluxations, um, are, are create, um, dysfunction of information coming into the brain of where our body is in space and how we fit into space. So we might not for lack of better term, nowhere we’re oriented in space that makes it difficult for us to, um, figure out how other things within our world are situated or orientated like letters or words. So the adjustment helps to fire information into the brain and to the area we’ll call the prefrontal cortex, which drives down more stabilization of the, of the, uh, spine, the muscles that find muscles and ligaments of the spine to help stabilize the spine, orienting us, especially our core, core stabilization of where we are in space that leads into fine motor control.
So, as we said in our previous slide, fine motor control is one of the things that is associated with a little fiddle fart later on having struggles such as dyslexia, the adjustment, it helps bring on board our core stabilization of know, and our joints of knowing where we are in space. That step number one, and to help us know where other things are oriented in our space and in our world. So as infant, we want to look at as, as Kairos, that working with little fiddle farts, whether you went implement neuro work in your practices or not cool beans, whatever works for your practice paradigm bet. We should be savvy enough to pick up on some of these clues that we might see on these little fiddle farts at different ages and stages in our practice. So the infant, one of the things we should be looking for is, um, do they have the ability to cross the midline by about three months or so?
You know, they’re bringing their hands to the midline. They’re looking at their hands. They’re very intrigued. This is called bilateral coordination, bringing both sides of our world together into the center and by about five or six months, like miss Elizabeth will show you, we should be able to take an object and bring it to midline and then pass it from one side to the other. So we want to look for that in our little fiddle parts, when we’re doing an evaluation, um, maybe they brought a rattle with them or a, um, English word. I’m going back into my German brain, uh, pacifier. So they’re called in, in, in, uh, English. Um, maybe they bring a pacifier with them to the appointment or so forth and see if they have it in one hand, do they have the ability to look and pass it over to the other side?
Do they, um, present with plagiocephaly? This is a red flag that we should be aware of because oftentimes a plagiocephaly their visual spatial orientation is to the side of the Flathead plat school. So they’re only seen that side of their world and they’re negating information from the other side. These are things, these are red flags. These are precursors to things that we can be concerned about later, academic, social, emotional learning, um, and a diagnosis of dyslexia. So we want to make sure that that little fit apart that infant understands and knows and recognizes. They have a right side of the body on the left side of the body and they can cross the body. So oftentimes as chiropractors, we advocate parents to start promoting this at every diaper change at every diaper change, we ask the, to take the infants, right, maybe the right arm and left leg and cross the midline and match them together in the midline and do that, you know, 10 to 20 times, depending on what that little fiddle fart will tolerate some tolerate more input than others.
And then we switch into the other side. All right. So we’re making them aware of their right side left side, and they’re able to cross that midline. These are some things we can do proactively in order to help that train from derailing later on in the later years. Um, the other thing that we want to be looking at in our practices and educating parents who do at home is some engaging activities set in your opposites, set them on the floor, this little picture. You can see there’s, these are those stacking kind of disks that need to stack on this pole right here behind him, um, and staff in a certain order. So you can use a thing like this. You can use, um, a bucket on the left side that say and blocks on the right side and play a game to where they pick the block up and cross the midline and put it in the bucket.
Or in this case, they take these disks and cross the midline and stack them there. So in your offices, you can see if they’re able to do that. Okay. A six months ish like no later than eight months, can they sit independently? Do they have good core stability? Because that core stability needs to come on control before on, on board before fine motor control, which we said fine, motor control is associated with developmental dyslexia, poor, fine motor control. So sit and observe. That’s part of your examination, observation as part of your examination. And then these are activities. We also advocate for parents to do at home with their little fiddle parts to foster optimal neuro-development and they’ll think you’re brilliant. Okay. So visual motor and crossing the midline, do they, can, they do a motor task and visually see how to manipulate that object to stack it and put it on that pole.
Then we want to work up into visual spatial games, these little, um, when I was little, they were sold. I am through Avon actually, but you can get them pretty much online. I’m sure Amazon has them that those, the little balls with the little different shapes get toys like this, that advocate visual spatial games, where that little fiddle part has to look at an object and it into the right shape and hole. So these are built building blocks to the brain is what you’re doing essentially. So from infancy, these are things we want to advocate, and these are things we want to look for in our opposites. If they have the ability to do that for the older child, we want to see, can they cross the midline and can, can they, um, simply have their arms up in the air like this and match the opposite arm, the opposite leg.
Can they do that with their eyes open and their eyes closed? If they have struggles knowing right from left, you can figure that out. And it’s not simply knowing say, Hey, raise your right hand or, Hey, tap your left foot. We want to know if they know spacial orientation of their body moving through space. So one thing you can do is, um, I call this the arrow traffic controller. Obviously I fly too much, right? Um, or used to play more pre COVID, but you have a series of arrows orientated to the right, to the left up and down and level. Number one would be for that little fiddle fart, or you can use the letter, you either you or an arrow, whatever you prefer. Um, and you have them use their arms, their body because they have to know where their body is in space and where it’s oriented in space to read.
So, to speak, to go visually from left to right across the sport and tell us which way, which way those arrows are pointed. So they use their arms and they call out right down, left up. Oftentimes those with trouble with reading, writing, spelling, dyslexia is also associated with ADH attention struggles, which stands to reason because if they’re frustrated and can’t, um, it can interpret their world, they will, can display more inattentive, um, behavioral issues. So you have them call out and that’s, that’s an issue with them standing still. And then you can have them jump. So they’re using their arms and also their entire buddy body to jump in that direction and tell you which way they’re jumping left right forward or up and down. So these are some general screening tools you can, you can use, and you can use them as exercises at home for parents to give to their little fiddle farts.
Um, the other thing I do is a thing called cross cross claps. So we play a game of, um, I am old. What was patty-cake, that’s it? Um, so you might have the child sitting across from the parents and they had to cross the midline and the parent crosses my life cross, cross, and in the middle of clap. So they have to cross the myth, cross class, clap again, fun games. You can do a song with that. You can play music with that, make it fun, but very simple things to help bring, um, both sides of the body and brain on board and help learning attention and behavior. Now, the other thing I want to just hammer out is the ATNR reflex asymmetrical tonic, neck reflex. This is one that is, um, uh, so has been associated with those with crossing the midline, um, hand eye coordination and dyslexia, um, issues.
It should integrate. It should no longer be active past about four to six months. And this in the little one is that fencer post. So when it’s active in the infant, you’ll see it as that fencer pose. Um, it’s this, this reflects, um, if it stays active is also associated with scoliosis. So your clinical skills or clinical observations should be, do they have postural stability, good, poor control. How is their fine motor control development? Can they cross the midline? Do they have a history of, um, um, uh, academic struggles or behavioral struggles? Is there ATNR reflex, still active, very general screening tools, um, to look at their neurological status. So for the little fiddle fart, some things to do to advocate integration deactivation, so to speak of this reflex is have them lie. Prone. Elizabeth is here demonstrating for us, had turned so that the ear is on the ground. One ears on the ground. You can have them looking at themselves in a mirror or such, or I’ll show you a little video here that Elizabeth was so a good
Lie prone in that fencer pose position. So the, the head is rotated ear to the ground. This arm is extended legs extended, and you just bring there and to there, to there those.
So you play a little game with them. Again, that’s advocating the integration of this reflex. Don’t want to do it before that 46 month window. Right? Um, but if you see a little fiddle fart, eight months a year, you know, 12 months, these are some games that you can play. A mom or dad can lie on their belly with them. And so they have that social engagement while they’re doing, bringing that hand, um, to the nose and make a game out of it. So again, we want to foster good, optimal neural development. And for the older fiddle fart, we often use what is called Childers test to test. If they have an active, a persistently active ATNR, this is where I call it the floppy monster. So their arms are straight out. Risks are flopped. The goal of this exam is that they’re able to keep their arms up at shoulder height.
They don’t start to, to drop and drag. They don’t have a lower tone, um, and they just can’t hold those arms up. And when you turn their head, their arm should stay forward with the body and not rotate to the side that that had has been rotated. And we do this, we turn the head to one side and hold for a count of 10, then bring it back to midline and hold for a count of 10, and then turn the head in the other direction and hold for a count of 10. You will do that. Slow pass twice. Again, looking at the arms, drift downward or drift to the side that you turn the head. You don’t not want that. And then I do one quick pass where I do just a quick turn of the head. And the reason for that quick pass is you might not pick up a lot on the slower head head turn.
It might be some slight deviation of the arms, but when you do a quick turn, that’s when you provoke it more. And so you can really see if that reflex is hanging out. So this is good for the kiddo. That’s four and a half, five ish, um, that older child, before that you can still, um, do the fencer pose where you have them lying, supine, turning their head and seeing if they actually go into that fence or pose themselves. Um, and that’s going to be where the head, where the head is turned, that arm and leg stakes extended, and the opposite side goes into flection. All right. So we got the little, we got the infant, we’ve got some things to do to help, um, mitigate this reflex and promote optimal development in the infant. We looked at the older fiddle, fart four and a half-ish and older, and some things we can do to help that age group integrate calm down an active persistent ATNR.
I call them star flours. So you can them, this is my little demonstration little kiddo. This is actually, she’s kind of like my granddaughter actually. And she she’s much older than this. Now, anyway, you can start them out in a chair, either seated or supine or in a bean bag, wherever you can get it to work. And I’m going to show you some ways to adapt these procedures to the more diff the, the lower function, a little fiddle fart, and you simply have them looking one way. And then when either to the beat of a metronome, to a clap, um, to, uh, the cue switch, whatever you want to be, they switch sides. Okay. So that’s a good exercise to do there. And then I saw what I call mountain climbers. And so, oops, that slide, that gift goofed up. Um, but I would call this mountain climbers and I will show you how to do these in just a moment though. Basically you had them in the well I’ll show you right now. Okay. Step number one. Good.
So essentially they’re in the 18, our position step number one is they straightened the flex hand flexed arm. Step number two is they straighten that leg. Step. Number three is a bend, the straight leg step. Number four is they flex the arm while they’re keeping their eyes on their fingers, as their hand is coming to towards their head. Um, and then they turn their head to the opposite side and do it. Um, so that is called the mountain climber. And for some reason I goofed and it ended up at my site. Sorry about that. So I want to just run through parts of this real quick. This is the lower functioning little fiddle part that we have to learn to adapt our protocols and our screening tools to fit the individual that comes into us. So we’re just going to chug through a couple of things here.
All right. So we’re going to do the ATNR and we call this the floppy monster test. Okay. What I’m going to do is I’m going to have, I have the kiddos facing a mirror because I’m going to have their eyes closed. And I want to be able to see their expressions on their face. And if they’re able to keep their eyes closed, what would do this?
So some expressions I want to see are they grimacing? You know, are they clearly frustrated, scared, unsure themselves. You can see her low muscle tone here. You can see how her postural instability is very evident here.
So we’re going to put you in, can arms go out like this and our risk of floppy like this. That’s why we call it the Bobby monster. Can you put him straight out, straight out? Just like that. Okay. Now stay right there. Okay. Can you put your feet together? Okay. Now your only job is trying to keep your arms there. Okay. Kevin, close your eyes. Can you close your eyes? I know it’s a little tricky. Okay. Keep your eyes closed. It’s hard to keep your eyes closed at night. My eyes closed. Okay. Do you want to make, even if it’s floppy, Peter. Okay. There we go. All right. Do you want to move away from the mirror? Will it be easier if we don’t face the mirror? Oh, it’s the only problem and makes it like this. When you close your eyes, it makes it floppy.
Well, that is one of the things we look for because the ATNR it’s going to, um, we’re looking at, um, the stipular propioceptive visual and auditory systems. Lot of proprioceptive issues. Remember when we take vision away, it proprioception is weak. Um, the personal struggle, because we use our eyes to compensate if we have weak proprioception. So, um, can we try it for just a second real quick? What do you want to leave your eyes open? Okay. So we’re going to let her leave her eyes open, but ultimately we want the eyes closed. Okay. He said I used to open for a minute. Okay. And I’m going to move your head. Can I turn your head? Okay. So what we’re looking for, if the arms move in conjunction with the way we build the head, can we bring them up again?
So that’s a good example. I just want to show you that how to adapt your procedures of that. When we let it leave her eyes open, it was more of an accomplishment for her. You saw her arms turn, but then she did bring them back to midline. That’s what I call the slow dot kiddo. That means that that processing of information, she was, she knew what she was supposed to do is keep her arms midline. They turned and then the brain kind of catches up and says, oh, that’s right. I’m not supposed to be there. I’m supposed to be back at midline. So you might see them jump back to midline. And that, to me indicates, um, a little fiddle part with slower sensory processing. Um, so just some ways to accommodate and adapt your, your procedures. Um, this would be a case where I would have the parents assist her in doing some of these exercises.
They would move the extremities for her. And let’s say, it’s the mountain climbers. They would move the arms and legs for her and turn her head at step number five until she could get the hang of it. Um, so that hopefully this gives a little information, uh, things to think, things to look at from a broader perspective, a to help foster optimal neural development. What might it mean when a little fiddle fart comes into your practice and, um, is not recognizing they have two sides of the world is not passing things over, um, doesn’t know, right from left is still doing this kind of thing. These are all indicators that their brain is having trouble processing, where they are in space and where other things are in space. And that may lead to their learning challenges and difficulties. So, um, again, ChiroSecure. You’re amazing.
Thank you so much for all you do, um, to all of you out there on behalf of me and miss Elizabeth hair. And we want to thank you and we want to wish you an incredible Thanksgiving, happy Thanksgiving, and to all a good night, a little bit too early on that one, that would be Christmas. And I will see you here. And Elizabeth, we’ll see you here. Uh, the third Thursday of December, we’ll see you right before Christmas and you will see the amazing Erik Kowlake on the first Thursday of December until then keep saving lives and keeping being amazing. Say bye Elizabeth. Bye!
Today’s pediatric show to my children was brought to you by ChiroSecure.